I Predict a Riot

by Bateman, Colin

  Mark wasn’t doing any work either. He paced by the window.

  Walter said, ‘Ants in your pants?’

  ‘Big killer scorpions,’ said Mark.

  ‘It’ll be fine.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say.’

  Walter smiled. Mark was due to appear before a Unionist committee after work, and if he passed muster he would be appointed as an assistant to a working councillor, to get him trained up before the next election, when they would hopefully run him as a candidate.

  ‘I know bugger-all about anything,’ said Mark.

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I mean, I know it in my head, but it never comes out right. I’ve always been crap at job interviews - why do you think I’ve been here so long?’

  ‘You’ll sail through. You said yourself, they’re desperate.’

  ‘What are you saying? I’m that bad?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re meant to build me up, not knock me down.’

  ‘You’ll be great. I have every confidence. But just remember - power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’

  ‘You’re very funny.’ Mark had now wandered in behind Walter. He glanced down at his computer. ‘This mad old biddy is serious, is she?’

  ‘Seems to be.’

  ‘She’s just going to give you the money?’

  ‘Well, I expect there’ll be some papers to sign.’

  ‘You know it’ll end in tears.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘Because doesn’t it always?’

  ‘Christ, and you want me to build you up.’

  ‘I just want you to keep your feet on the ground. Chances are she’s got Alzheimer’s. You’ll go round there tomorrow and she’ll think you’re her dad. Or if she hasn’t gone loopy she’s one of those professional conmen, you know, comes on like your granny but actually she’s playing you like an oboe. She’ll get you to sign those papers and then you’ll go home and find your house has been sold out from under you.’

  ‘Yeah. Right.’

  ‘I’m serious, Walter. I’m only trying to protect you.’

  ‘Right. I’ll bear that in mind. Good luck with your interview, you dough-bag.’

  Walter gave him a look. Mark shrugged and went back to the window to contemplate his political future. Walter clicked onto the next page on the Big Houses website. He wasn’t quite sure where to start. Buy an old house, fix it up, make a profit? Buy a couple of apartments, rent them out? What about commercial property? Or property abroad?

  Walter had never bought a house in his life. He’d inherited his own house from his late parents. Most of the drawers were still crammed with their knick-knacks. He had never paid a mortgage. The ground rent was £25 a year, and he was usually three months late paying it. Investing in property might have been completely new to him, yet if filled him with a tremendous excitement. This wasn’t like dreaming of being a rock star, or transforming his body in the gym. This was do-able, this was real life. He was within spitting distance of turning his life around. He just had to take the first step. But he would be cautious. No point in rushing in like a head-the-ball. Study the market. Establish where property prices were rising. Consult experts. Weigh up the pros and cons. The different sorts of mortgages. How to manage a bidding war.

  There was a sudden ping and a small box appeared on his screen, showing that he had an internal email, and asking if he wanted to accept it. Walter glanced up at Mark, but he was still by the window. He clicked yes.

  A message appeared. Looking at houses, are we?

  Walter looked down the corridor. The door to Office 12 was closed, but he couldn’t imagine that it could be anyone but Steven, its mysterious occupant. With everything that had happened in the last few days he hadn’t got back to him about his generous but somewhat creepy job offer. And now, with the backing of a rich old woman, and the confidence and opportunity that gave him, he no longer felt quite so intimidated, or awkward about rejecting it. He would make his fortune on his own terms now.

  He wrote back: Yes, I am.

  A minute later the message box appeared again, and again he accepted.

  Kill someone, did you? Come into some unexpected cash?

  Yes, wrote Walter. But before he sent it he thought. No, that’s not very clever. Who knows what someone like Steven might use such an admission for? There was, he thought, no real sense of humour in an email, because they could always be interpreted in so many ways. So he deleted his answer, and instead typed: Just looking for a new house.

  Steven typed back, It’s a jungle out there.

  Walter typed: I know that.

  You should be careful.

  I will be.

  You never came back on my job offer.

  I’ve been tied up.

  It was impolite.

  Walter stared at that one for a while. He felt a little queasy. He typed: Sorry. I appreciate the offer, but I’ve decided against it.

  Almost as soon as he sent it, the response came: You owe me.

  Walter looked up at the door again. He half-expected it to open, but there was no sign of movement. He stared at Steven’s message. He desperately wanted to ignore it, but he couldn’t. It demanded a response.

  So he typed: What about that drink? Again, he hesitated before sending it. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was go out with Steven for a drink, but he felt he had to do something. He had, after all, gone out of his way to help Walter track down Margaret, even if it had ended in tears. So he did owe him. But still …

  Mark said, ‘Why the long face?’

  Walter shrugged. He stared at the message. His finger hovered over the send. Then he quickly deleted it and wrote: We should go out for a drink. Then after a further bout of contemplation, he added, sometime.

  Walter took a deep breath, then pressed send.

  He stared at the screen for the next two minutes, his fingers crossed that Steven would respond with equal vagueness. But no response came. Not in the next five minutes. Or ten.

  Or in the two hours that were left before lunch, nor when he hurried back to his screen after devouring a salad in the canteen, nor before he left for home. As he walked down the corridor he couldn’t take his eyes off the door to Office 12. He gave a sigh of relief when he was finally out of the building and waiting at the bus stop opposite. But when the bus came, and he took his usual seat near the front, he kept glancing over his shoulder, and it was the same on the train on the way home.

  44

  In the Pink

  Billy Gilmore always felt naked when he wasn’t wearing a tie. Sometimes even in bed, when he literally was naked, he would wake up in the middle of the night and feel for the knot at his throat. There was something reassuring about it. Something civilised. It wasn’t like he was a tie nut. He didn’t have a huge collection of ties; he didn’t have brightly coloured or polka-dotted or hugely wide or shoestring-narrow ties, or ties for every occasion; nor did he have seasonal ones - in particular he didn’t have any ties with Santa Claus - just a handful of your normal, common or garden ties. Without a tie he felt robbed of his identity. And also, people could mistake him for what he wasn’t. Like today, nervously approaching the Shankill Road Rangers Supporters Club, wearing jeans and a Rangers top. No tie. With his short hair and his prominent brow, which seemed to freckle up on the least possible exposure to sunlight or even sometimes to a strong light bulb, he could just as easily be taken for one of them, with their skinheads and tattoos, crowding around the entrance, an hour before kick-off, wanting to get their cheap pints in and start singing their harsh sectarian songs. He hated having to sit amongst them, hated pretending to love the football, hated the fact that he had forced himself to learn the words to all the songs, hated the fact that he screamed you Fenian bastard at the Ref in order to blend in, hated their hard faces, their violence, hated the flags and the emblems and the UDA regalia, and he hated not having his suit and his tie. But he quite liked being in P
ink Harrison’s company.

  This was Pink’s place. You wouldn’t find his name anywhere, of course, but it was his - like a dozen other places were his. He was always here on a Saturday for the football, drifting in and out, shouting at the TV with the rest of them but really not having much of a care one way or another. It was his presence that was important. They were his people. They loved him. They loved him for his blond hair and his pink shirts, for his soft South Belfast accent and manicured nails; they loved him because he bought rounds and provided Es and protected them from the Republicans and kept a squad of men to break the kneecaps of joyriders and petty thieves and men or women who disagreed with him. They loved him so much that they’d even voted him onto Belfast City Council. The Official Unionists loved him because he got votes, and ignored the fact that everyone who wasn’t in love with him was too scared to vote against him. Vote once! Vote often! Oh yes, they loved Pink Harrison. Yet he was so utterly unlike them. They said on the Shankill that they broke the mould when they made Pink Harrison, and Billy quite agreed. One of a kind.

  Billy was without his tie, and half-heartedly drinking pint after pint of Harp, and shouting at the TV, because that’s the way Pink wanted it. It was his arrangement. At some point during the match Pink would catch his eye, give him the nod, then Billy would make his way towards the toilets. But instead of going in, he’d slip inside the storeroom next door. A few minutes later Pink would join him, and together they would go through the accounts of whichever of his many and varied businesses Pink needed attending to. Perhaps today he was trying to avoid paying tax or VAT, or laundering money or illegally purchasing shares or setting up a company as a front for purchasing property. Pink, Billy thought, was quite an astute businessman, and had the knack of making whoever he worked with feel like his partner when really he was the only one in charge. He would clap his arm around Billy and shout: ‘Pink and Billy - ruling Belfast through fear and accountancy!’ Billy would laugh along with him. It felt great, but he would also flush with sweat. It was intoxicating, but scary. They met in the storeroom because Pink was convinced the cops were bugging his office. He also thought there were undercover cops in the bar. And in cars outside. And in the office across the road. He knew his people loved him, but he expected to be killed by them. He said it was the nature of his business. He was worried about going bald, and about skin cancer, and the price of his pink jumpers. He was worried that people would think he was gay.

  Billy wanted to say, ‘People do think you’re gay. It’s the pink jumpers.’ But he didn’t dare.

  ‘I’m not gay, you know,’ Pink would say, unprompted. ‘I’m just a character.’

  Billy knew they would kill him if he was gay. It was the nature of the beast. But as long as he remained just vaguely effeminate, like a pier-end comedian, and protected them from Republicanism and bought them cheap alcohol and drugs, and broke enough knees from time to time, Pink would probably be all right.

  Pink gave him the nod halfway through the second half, Rangers two up against Hibs and the crowd in good form. Billy squeezed his way through to the toilets, then slipped into the storeroom. Pink arrived a few minutes later, all smiles.

  ‘How’re you doin’, fella?’ he said.

  ‘Okay. All right.’

  Pink reached behind a stack of toilet rolls and produced a familiar thick file. He handed it to Billy.

  ‘Get your head stuck into that,’ he said.

  Billy hadn’t slept for the previous two nights, ever since Jimmy Marsh Mallow had tried to turn him into a police informer. A tout. Before his Marsh encounter he had taken some comfort from the theory that, as Pink’s accountant, he knew all the secrets, and therefore was indispensable. But Marsh’s revelation that Pink ran more than one crooked accountant meant that his position wasn’t quite so secure. For all he knew, the baying crowd in the room next door was entirely made up of accountants, all acting the part of rabid Rangers supporters. If he told Pink about Marsh, then what was to stop Pink merely moving his files to one of his other accountants, and quietly disposing of him, under concrete? Conversely, if he didn’t tell Pink, and Pink somehow found out, then he’d certainly form part of the new motorway to Dublin. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. At his worst Marsh could only put him in prison, or take away his earthly goods. But still, Marsh was a legend, a timeless threat; he would be there or abouts, able to haunt Billy long after Pink had gone the way of all gangsters.

  A rock and a hard place, thought Billy. A rock and a hard place.

  Thing was, he had nowhere to turn for advice. Margaret was his closest friend, and despite his high hopes of the past few days, it was becoming clear that she wasn’t that close at all. One night of hot sex. Then the cold shoulder. After her ‘funny’ response to his first text, she had ignored seventeen others.

  As Billy scanned down the first page of figures, there came a violent uproar from the other side of the wall. Clearly Hibs had scored and the accountants were trying to outdo each other in the vehemence of their reaction. Billy took a deep breath. He had to do something.

  ‘Pink,’ he said.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Got picked up by Marsh Mallow yesterday.’

  Pink’s eyes held steady on the list of figures he was studying. ‘Mmm-hmm?’

  ‘Wants me to become an infomer.’

  ‘Hmmfh. Only a matter of time.’

  ‘You knew he would … ?’

  Pink glanced up, smiled. ‘Well, he watches me like a hawk. Bastard.’

  ‘So, what should I do?’

  ‘Well, you must become one.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘If you don’t, Marsh will twist all my secrets out of you. But if you do, and give him all the wrong information, then he’ll leave you alone until he thinks he has enough to get me - which, of course, he never will have, as you’ll be feeding him three kinds of crap.’

  ‘But … won’t he realise that?’

  ‘Of course he will. Eventually.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘Well, who knows. That’s the beauty of it. Nobody wins, but nobody loses, and the game goes on forever. It’s like The Sims. Now relax. I’m not going to carve you up into little pieces, burn them to a crisp and bury what’s left in a landfill site. We’re partners. Now, take a look at these.’

  Pink passed him a handful of crumpled receipts from the boss of one of his taxi companies. ‘He’s trying to diddle me,’ said Pink. ‘I’m convinced of it.’

  Billy began to flatten them out with one hand. The other went to his throat, instinctively feeling for the comfort of the noose that wasn’t there.

  45

  The Magician’s Apprentice

  Mark arrived at Unionist Headquarters at exactly three minutes to 8 p.m. He strolled through the front door with a casual confidence which belied the fact that he had spent the past three-quarters of an hour sitting in his car doubled up with cramps. Nerves. It was natural. He was setting out to change the world.

  Entering Unionist HQ was a bit like entering your mad old auntie’s house. You could see that it had once been young and thrusting and powerful and possessed of an impressive pair of breasts, but it had now gone to seed, and clipped money-off coupons from knitting magazines and smelled vaguely of cat urine, and its breasts had dropped so far that they were in danger of causing the entire edifice to topple over. At least, this was how Mark saw it. And he was the man who would apply the Wonderbra to the sagging breasts of Unionist power in Ulster.

  Mark was wearing a light blue suit and polished brogues. His teeth were clean, his breath fresh. He looked around the reception area for some sign of life, then called, ‘Hello.’ There was an almost palpable heaviness in the air, a pungent mixture of political decline and dry rot. He shook his head slightly at the dusty portraits, then called again. His voice echoed softly. Or at least he thought it did, but then there came the soft clump of leisure shoes on deep shag and another, ‘Hello,’ came back at him from the top
of a curving set of polished wooden stairs.

  ‘Hello?’ Mark ventured again.

  ‘Hello!’ A small man, or of medium height but rather stooped, in a dark jacket, finally appeared and smiled crookedly down at him. ‘That will be young Mark, will it?’

  He almost responded, ‘That it will,’ but managed to restrain himself. God, he thought, what am I getting myself into? He was led up the stairs and down a long corridor lined with more portraits of powerful-looking dead men. The man didn’t bother to introduce himself; he appeared to think that Mark should recognise him, and certainly there was a vague resemblance to someone who had once featured on Inside Ulster, but politicians are a bit like film stars: you tend to remember them in their prime, not with the inevitable physical decline which comes with age and the lack of public office.

  ‘Now, if you’ll just take a seat there, we’ll be with you in a little mo.’ The old man indicated a chair opposite the open door to what appeared to be a well-stocked library. Besides the books, Mark could see a desk with three chairs behind it, and one in front. Two other elderly men were sipping tea. The man who had led him up the stairs stepped into the room and half-closed the door behind him. Mark sighed.

  ‘Nervous?’

  Mark looked sharply to his right. Another man he vaguely recognised, but couldn’t quite place, was smiling at him. He was a good six feet tall with sandy, well-cut hair. Probably about forty. He was wearing track shoes, a pair of black jeans, and a pink short-sleeved shirt. He had a mug of coffee in his hand. At last, Mark thought, someone who hadn’t fought the Hun.